IN the early hours of Sunday, April 4,
1993, Bruce Hughes was in his former partner's unit in the
Brisbane suburb of Morningside. Deaf and mute since birth,
Mila Bordador Wills, a 36 year-old Filipina, could not
scream when he lashed out at her in the bedroom.
Neighbours later said they heard nothing.

Mila and Bruce had separated in
November 1992 after an 18-month relationship. Mila gave
birth to Hughes' child, Marissa, in January 1993. She had
another child, Melissa, by her first partner, Harry Wills,
who she met in 1982 when he was studying in the
Philippines. They had separated in 1990.

Hughes, 38, an unemployed plumber,
found a piece of wood in Mila's bedroom and hit her, he
later told police, "a half-dozen times around the head."
When police found her, they initially thought she was the
victim of a frenzied stabbing. Her body and the bed where
it lay were soaked in blood. Hughes bashed her so
ferociously that a doctor likened her head injuries to
those that could be caused by a car accident. Mila died
without regaining consciousness the following day at
Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital. Hughes later
confessed to killing her and is currently serving a life
sentence.

Mila Wills was one of 16 Filipino woman
and 3 children to have died violently in Australia since
1980.

Three other women and a child are
listed as missing and feared dead. Four women were
repeatedly stabbed or slashed, three were strangled, three
drowned, one was shot several times, one was savagely
beaten with a heavy instrument, two died of carbon
monoxide poisoning, and another two were found cause of
death unknown. Two sisters, aged 5 and 12 years, were
strangled and an 11-month old baby died of repeated blows
to its head with a hammer - the mother survived the
attack. In nearly all cases their Australian partners were
implicated.

Joseph Sokol, 40, from Blacktown, New
South Wales was convicted in 1987 of the murder of his 17
year-old Filipina bride, Rowena. Sokol, who tried twice to
commit suicide after being arrested for her murder,
visited her one afternoon and shot her five times with a
rifle in her front yard.

In 1990, Charles Schembri, 41, an
unemployed truck driver from Melbourne, was jailed for the
manslaughter of Generosa Bongcodin, 25, a hairdresser.
Schembri had met Generosa three days after arriving in
Manila in 1981 and married her within a month. Two days
before he choked her to death, Schembri sent her a
newspaper cutting about the killing of Rowena Sokol on
which he wrote words of approval.

Ivor James Haynes, 63, strangled 5
year-old Elizabeth and 12 year-old Yohana in 1993 during
their access visit. Found guilty of manslaughter, he will
serve a term of six to 12 years in prison.

Of the estimated 80,000 Filipinos
living in Australia, about 20,000 are married to
Australian men, making them the ethnic group with the
highest number of inter-cultural marriages in the country.

The Centre for Philippine Concerns
Australia (CPCA) believes the high incidence of violent
deaths and disappearances of Filipino women in Australia
is an extreme part of the domestic violence spectrum these
women face. Although recognising that most
Filipina-Australian marriages are successful, the CPCA
believes there is a growing body of evidence that a
disproportionately high percentage of Filipinas who come
to Australia on sponsorship arrangements become the
victims of domestic violence.

Certainly social workers agree as they
are reporting increasing cases of domestic violence,
depression and loneliness amongst Filipinas married to
Australian men and a growing demand for services. One
Sydney social worker reports she has seen 20 Filipinas a
month since 1988 with serious marriage problems, mainly
domestic violence.

Australian lawyer, Dr. Jocelynne Scutt,
in The Sunday Age (July 4, 1993) said that male
preconceptions of Filipino women as submissive could
contribute to their being beaten and ultimately killed.
"The implication is that if you get a woman from the
Philippines she will be perfectly submissive, a servant if
you like."

CPCA's national co-ordinator, Melba
Marginson, says the practice of seeking Filipina wives is
based on the myth of Asian women as domesticated, docile
and economically vulnerable and dependent. She says these
men believe that as the women come from developing
countries, they have saved them from a life of poverty and
they expect the women to be grateful and repay their
gratitude by fulfilling their every desire.

"These are men who usually cannot get
partners in Australia, who cannot relate with strong
women, and so they go out of Australia and get women who
they think are meek, humble and domesticated. But
eventually, once they bring them here and they find out
they are strong and independent, they start using
violence."

Ms. Marginson believes this myth about
Asian women is rooted in sexist and racist attitudes. She
resents media images of Filipinas in Australia as
"mail-order brides" or "thrillers from Manila" and says
these reinforce the myth about Asian women and portray
Filipinas as inferior intellectually and socially to their
Australian partners. The fact is the majority of Filipino
women married to Australian men are well-educated.

In a 1990 study of Filipina-Australian
marriages, two-thirds of the women sampled had completed
undergraduate or postgraduate studies, whereas most of
their husbands had completed vocational or technical
training courses. The same study also indicated that of
the groups surveyed, Filipina-Australian marriages were
less likely to succeed given the education, cultural, and
age differences. (Intermarriages in International
Contexts: a Study of Filipina Women Married to Australian,
Japanese and Swiss Men, Scalabrini Migration Center,
Quezon City.)

As for the "mail-order bride" tag, a
1986 University of the Philippines study of how Filipinas
met their Australian partners showed that although 30%
used formal mail-order institutions, the majority met
their partners through informal networks of relatives,
friends, and travel. The study found that although
introduction agencies, pen-pal systems, bars and brothels
served initially as the major means by which Australian
men met Filipinas in the 1970s, by the mid to late 1980s,
enough women had arrived in Australia for the informal
networks to become the major means of finding a partner.

Emere Distor from the Brisbane branch
of the CPCA says, "I think women in the Philippines have
become commodities, and this is to blame on both the
poverty there and on the Marcos tourism campaign. So
Filipino women risk marrying men they hardly know and
travel to other countries so that they'll earn enough to
send money home."

Ms. Distor says because many of these
women are poor, they are vulnerable to visiting men who
beguile them with promises of an easy life in the west.
The men play the part of rich foreigners, often splashing
money around to impress the women and their families.
Unable to resist the temptation of living in the west, the
women enter into relationships which they might otherwise
have not, given that the men are usually 10 to 20 years
older, the courtships are usually brief, and the men
usually have very conservative views of a woman's role in
society.

Once the women arrive in Australia,
many discover that their kind and wealthy husbands are not
what they had seemed. In fact, a number of studies
indicate that many are on pensions or in low-paid
employment.

Theresa Gatbonton, Acting Coordinator
of Brisbane's Migrant Women's Emergency Support Service (MWESS)
says financial abuse is common in many relationships and
she has come across cases where the women were given next
to nothing to feed themselves and their families. "I know
of one woman who was given $50 a week to pay the family
bills and buy groceries. She has three children. How can
you survive on that?" She says the men often hide how much
they earn.

Aurea Payumo, also an MWESS worker,
says it's common for these women to accept outside laundry
and ironing at home just to bring in some extra income to
feed themselves and their children.

Ms. Gatbonton believes that Australia's
refusal to recognise the skills and qualifications of
migrant women contributes to their being abused. If their
skills and qualifications are recognised, then many may be
able to get relevant employment and be financially
independent of their spouses.

In the Philippines, women often control
the family budget, so Filipinas are shocked to discover
that the men control the purse-strings in Australia. As
for sending money home, Australian men often have a
different view of family responsibilities and refuse to
give the women money to send home to their families. This
can lead to conflict as the women argue for the right to
support their families.

"You are expected to send money home.
In the Philippines families support each other and the
family has all sorts of expectations about the women
moving overseas because of the colonial mentality that
anything overseas is much better. They think these women
are living lives of luxury in the west," Ms. Gatbonton
says. "The women often feel ashamed that they are unable
to send money home regularly and they have let their
families down. Many become severely depressed."

Besides the economic abuse, many women
end up isolated both geographically and socially. This can
be terrible for these women who usually come from large
families and an environment where communities are an
integral part of life. Ms. Gatbonton says that if the
women live in isolated areas it also means that they do
not have ready access to support services.

She says that although Filipinas who
leave violent relationships can now remain in Australia,
many are not aware that they can and the men play on this
fear of deportation. The men use this to keep the women in
line and so many feel trapped. Up until recently,
Filipinas who left such relationships could be deported.
If a Filipina now leaves a violent situation, once she has
obtained an Apprehended Violence Order against the man, or
he has been convicted of committing criminal assault
against her, she can get permanent residency.

A 1992 report by the University of
Wollongong noted that an increasing number of Australian
men were serial sponsors of Filipino women. These are men
who, having tired of their first partners, separate from
them and return to the Philippines to find another. The
most extreme example is of a South Australian man who had
seven Filipino brides.

Ms. Gatbonton says although this report
came out two years ago and was commissioned by the Federal
Department of Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic
Affairs (DILGEA), none of its recommendations for checking
serial sponsorships and domestic violence have been
implemented. "The South Brisbane Immigration Legal
Service, the Bureau of Ethnic Affairs and ourselves [MWESS]
have convened a group to monitor the recommendations of
the report and collect more information."

She would like to see all sponsors
legally required to provide their intending spouses with
personal details, including abuse or assault records and
any history of protection orders issued against them.
However, under Australia's Privacy Act (1988), government
is not allowed to collect and reveal personal information.

Ms. Gatbonton says the irony here is
that when a Filipina applies to come to Australia, the
Immigration Department scrutinises her. "She's got to have
health checkups and supply personal details about herself
and her family. And yet, there are no details required
from the men. It's not a balanced view. What about the
rights of the women to know about the men?"

From her experience, alarming numbers
of women from a wide variety of non-English speaking
backgrounds are suffering abuse and government agencies
generally tend to ignore them. "Non-English speaking
background and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women
are always on the bottom for receiving services and
funding. You can see it's not a priority. We're always put
in a box and stereotyped as if our concerns and what
happens to us are not really important."

In the meantime, these women suffer.
They are beaten, raped, psychologically and economically
abused, and isolated. Some are killed.

In February 1994, two children
discovered the half-naked body of Filipina, Elma Rebecca
Young, 42, in a gully at Munruben, south of Brisbane,
while waiting for their school bus. She had been strangled
to death. Her police officer husband has been arrested. He
will appear at Beenleigh Magistrates Court for committal
proceedings on July 4.

Elma Young was the 16th Filipino woman
to have died violently in Australia since 1980. HOW
MANY MORE MUST DIE?